The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Bart wrote to us about a strange experience he had after purchasing a new Thinkpad from Lenovo. He had a perfectly smooth transaction, until months later when he received a letter from a collection agency. The agency was demanding payment for the laptop he had already paid for. Or so he thought.

He wrote:

A weird thing happened to me on my recent ThinkPad X61 Clearance purchase. I got a letter from Lyons Collection services about a remaining balance for my purchase.

Surely enough, I went back into my records from March (date of purchase) and they had only billed me for shipping and then marked the transaction completed. I asked the Lyons rep, and he said that this would not go on my credit report and that they got a large number of similar collection requests from Lenovo.

I went ahead and paid since it seemed to match what I had from my records. I did get a Paypal notice that authorized payment, but ultimately I was only charged for shipping.

“A large number of collection requests,” eh? Interesting. Should Bart have noticed that his card was never charged for the purchase? Yes, but it was an oversight on his part, and we’d like to think that it’s not his job to make sure that he has exchanged money for a good or service. Optimistic? Maybe.

Before we had a chance to post Bart’s letter, though, we received a message from yet another new Thinkpad owner. G. wrote to us:

I bought a laptop from Lenovo.com on August 10th. I checked my debit card online to see when the money will be charged to my account and something weird happened. It showed as if they charged me for it for 5-6 days after I bought it, but now I have all the money back in my account, as if they never charged me for the laptop. Oh, and I received the laptop on August 18th. I’m typing this on it actually. What should I do?